Dawning of a New Age

[Vazumongr]

It's late at night here so I'm going to be kind of brief, most of this is going to be copied from my reply on someone else's post. I'm a bit of an old head Warframe player, been playing for 10ish years, but I believe this update to be a forewarning of the dawning a new age of Warframe. We've had the now-old damage system for 10 years? 2013 or 2014, around there. It's a significant change. A significant change to what I thought was one of the most intriguing parts of the game. And to me, the simplification and watering down of one of the most intriguing parts of the game is a tragedy. I hope I'm in the minority because it would be terrible for the well-being of the game if the majority of players felt the same as me, but this update ruins a significant part of the game. I truly mean ruins, I don't have much interest in playing at the moment. The introduction and power-creep of Overguard was already pushing me to the door but this watering down and removal of system depth is probably shutting the door.

For years the game has been going into the direction of making it simpler to "do big damage." With near total neglect for everything else in the game. It's disappointing. There's no reward for understanding the systems. There's no rationale for min-maxing your weapons in your loadouts for specific enemy units. They've just been slowly removing depth from the game. Warframe's charm, in my opinion at least, was in that depth. The deep intricate systems that took more than a 5 second glance to gain a deep understanding, especially mastery, of. Now it's just a symbol match game. "Match the symbol, do 50% more damage. Match the wrong symbol, do 50% less damage." Personally, I feel a lot of the systemic changes would have to be pulled back for me to really find the game interesting again. This resistance update and Overguard are the two biggest systemic changes that are pushing me out the door, but I could honestly write-up a multi-thousand word 'essay' on my critiques, praises, and grievances with Warframe. Hell I've got a short 500 word scratchpad on an analysis of Overguard and a separate unfinished 3000+ word doc on an assessment and rework proposal for Caliban that I never got around to polishing up to share on the forums. (As for why I have docs like that lying around, I work in games and have always admired Warframe and the way DE approached it.) The game has evolved into a near unrecognizable version compared to what it use to be 10+ years ago. In that evolution, certain players watched it turn into something they had no interest in, and that's fine. This time, it seems I am starting to fall into that group.

Anyways, that's the end of my spiel as I need to head to bed. This isn't some "glamorous goodbye" or some S#&$, just wanted to share my feelings on the matter, hopefully without anyone resonating with it. I wish the best for DE, Warframe, and the game's community. I've loved the majority of the time I've spent in this game and community. I hope this is a step in the right direction for the game, even if it's a step I've no interest in following. It's been an incredibly fun journey with an uncountable amount of great memories. I hope for the majority of players, you love this change. I hope this change makes the game more enjoyable for you. I hope this hyper-simplification is what you have been hoping for. For DE, I hope this is truly in-line with your vision of Warframe.

Someone else's post on the topic: https://forums.warframe.com/topic/1403388-please-for-the-love-of-god-revert-health-types-back-to-the-old-system/

Edit: I don't think I was clear enough but I am speaking strictly about the Damage Resistance/Vulnerability changes. The changes to armor and enemy health scaling I more or less agree with. It's strictly the streamlining of resistances I'm talking about in this write-up.

Edited Thursday at 01:58 PM by Vazumongr

[(MOB)ProvRI]

A big part of it, I’d imagine, comes down to accessibility. I very much get many people love going down the rabbit hole of systems minutiae, diving deep into systems layered on top of other systems on top of other systems, and spreadsheets.

But many others don’t. I have zero interest in a game that mandates, effectively, homework to be able to play it, progress through it, and have fun doing it. I’ve got other things to do. This is just a game.

Speaking for me personally, I find zero fulfillment or joy in wrestling with overly complex and convoluted systems and mechanics. I just want to jump around and blow things up with cool swords and sparkly powers. I want an approach that lets me easily understand cause and effect, and then promptly lets me consign it all to the background where I can largely forget about it in favor of jumping around and blowing things up.

Warframe’s previous fragmented and granular approach to damage, I found to be a PIA to keep track of. I wanted to try different warframes and different weapons. I didn’t want to deal with worrying about optimized loadouts for each specific enemy group. I ignored all that. The refined and streamlined system lets me continue to ignore all that, only now without punishing me for it.

But there still seems to be plenty of under the hood tinkering possible for those who enjoy that. It’s just not as heavy a requirement for the entire player base. I think the changes are positive ones.

[Vazumongr]

9 minutes ago, (MOB)ProvRI said:

I have zero interest in a game that mandates, effectively, homework to be able to play it, progress through it, and have fun doing it.

10 years ago, I would agree with that assessment. Nowadays, with the surplus of guides put out all across various websites, that isn't the case. There's a youtube video, a reddit post, an overframe.gg build, for everything. The ability to bypass that complexity and just copy-paste the end-result of what someone else was able to piece together has been around for years. I hope this doesn't get misconstrued as me saying your feelings or preferences are invalid, I'm specifically talking about Warframe being viewed as a game that mandated a thorough understanding of it's systems to play it. It has not been like that for years, thanks to the plethora of guides out there. 

I appreciate your response and I'm glad that there is an audience for which these changes are positive :)

[quxier]

https://forums.warframe.com/forum/1971-enemy-scaling-status-effect-rework-feedback/

[Vazumongr]

13 hours ago, quxier said:

https://forums.warframe.com/forum/1971-enemy-scaling-status-effect-rework-feedback/

I put it here as that forum explicitly states "Enemy Scaling" and "Status Effects", and damage resistances/vulnerabilities doesn't "fall into" either of those ¯\_(.___.)_/¯ didn't feel like an appropriate fit. I could cross-post this over there if others do think it's "close enough" to fit.

Edited Friday at 03:21 AM by Vazumongr

[MonarchPrime]

This is such a minority take. The changes are actually such a good benefit to a lot of gameplay just being readable and intuitive. Your view is really selfish honestly. You're speaking like accessibility changes are objectively bad when the "nuances" literally don't make sense in a way that you could intuit it naturally. As somebody with 20k hours who deep dives a lot, the old systems are so terrible. So many random health types on enemies, with a ton of bizarre faction-health mixing of such types wasn't "rewarding you for min maxing" it was punishing you for not using the broadest, most high coverage build. For example, cloned flesh might as well not exist because 90% of the time you're hitting armor. And if you fully strip an armored enemy they die instantly anyway. It's SO arbitrary to have it.

By making each faction have a streamlined weakness, it actually ENCOURAGES players to learn the game and build for specific missions. I can tell you how few people actually engaged with the game the way you're talking about and instead slapped viral heat on everything and called it a day because doing that 99.9% of the time is going to be just as effective as whatever you're doing unless you're talking about deep endurance runs in which case you are a HUGE minority. Go play elden ring/souls games if you want skill/knowledge/minmaxing rewards.


There's a massive difference between "complex systems" and "A bunch of systems with no future proofing that fell apart as the game progressed". This problem was only going to get worse as factions get added like murmur.

Imagine if skarmory in pokemon was randomly weak to ghost because the game just said so. But only Skarmory in Johto are weak to ghost.

 

https://i.imgur.com/2RXo1c5.png

[Vazumongr]

10 hours ago, MonarchPrime said:

Your view is really selfish honestly. You're speaking like accessibility changes are objectively bad when the "nuances" literally don't make sense in a way that you could intuit it naturally.

Did you read what I posted? I literally said, "...to me, the simplification and watering down of one of the most intriguing parts of the game is a tragedy. I hope I'm in the minority..." I don't see how saying that I hope I'm the only one who doesn't like the change is selfish. The entire post is just me saying that I hope no one else feels like me because the changes to what I found to be one of the most intriguing systems ruins the experience for me and here's why. I never said anything even close to accessibility changes being objectively bad. And if you are talking about my reply to ProvRI, I explicitly said, "I'm specifically talking about Warframe being viewed as a game that mandated a thorough understanding of it's systems to play it. It has not been like that for years, thanks to the plethora of guides out there." You haven't needed a deep understanding to push high level content in years. You could just copy+paste some build from the internet.

 

10 hours ago, MonarchPrime said:

unless you're talking about deep endurance runs in which case you are a HUGE minority.

I am and I figured as much. Which is why I came here to share my thoughts and see what other people thought...


And on the new system, I'd argue that there is even less options now. Grineer: Impact or Corrosive. Corrosive can be added to any weapon at 180% and strips armor. Always better than Impact unless the weapons base damage is >80% Impact. Corpus: Puncture or Magnetic. Magnetic can be added to any weapon at 180% and strips shields. Always better than Puncture unless the weapons base damage is >80% Puncture. Infested: Slash or Heat. Heat doesn't have as high of a X% since it's not a combination, but can still surpass the bonus from Slash mods, so unless the weapons base damage is ~>70%, Heat is better. (I didn't run the numbers for this one). And when we count for status effects Ignite deals more damage than Bleed. Most infested don't have armor and for the few that do, Heat strips armor, which will in-turn increase all damage dealt. For majority of content it's just "match the element." Corrosive on Grineer, Magnetic on Corpus, and Heat on Infested. The kicker is that this is a result of the design of the current system. Before we lacked variety because of a lack of balance. Now it's by design.

Anyways, I don't know how me sharing my thoughts on the change and stating several times I hope I'm in the minority and that the majority of players like the change is selfish and acting like accessibility is objectively bad. All I did was elaborate on why it's not my cup of tea and I hope everyone else loves it. I'm glad you at least seem to like the change :)

[Voltage]

I don't disagree with the overall premise of what you're observing with the game's direction, but 2020 with Warframe Revised was a more definitive turning point in how balance and powercreep are handled. This update is just par for the course. 

It is what it is. The game old players signed up for is mostly lost, with only a handful of "pillars" still remaining like Parkour 2.0 or the overall modding system.

Personally, I still have fun despite how watered down many areas of the game have become. There's still depth if you're looking for it, lot's of players just choose to ignore it and that's fine, because there is little consequence in doing so.

Edited 21 hours ago by Voltage

[40PE]

Honestly not sure where you felt that the old system was even a little bit of intriguing? I'm not a pro, nor min-maxer and consider myself even after this many years noob. But in the old system I had only a few weapons set up for the simplest ways to damage enemies. Now I already have many of the weapons set up on all the three tabs for the main factions and I really like swappibg between them. More to it is the fact that if I set up for the faction and considered the weapon in the old sywrem weak, now I can shred OKAY with it, even higher level of enemied no natter if it felt trash/outsated/oldlegacy/etc. in the past. Otherwise I seriously feel like old time players just cry no matter what is the change so why the hell D.E. should care about the cry if that's just "the old one was better". /shrug/

[Vazumongr]

2 hours ago, 40PE said:

Honestly not sure where you felt that the old system was even a little bit of intriguing?

Nowadays Warframe is significantly more solo-oriented, at the very least solo-able. It's a lot easier nowadays for you to take almost any Warframe and do all the things, including kill all the things all the time. Giant fat AoE damage that clears tilesets in instants. This overall design change is one I don't really like, specifically because it's gone so far in that direction that it's the same way at super high level content.

Years ago, this was far from the case. There were only a small number of Warframe that had abilities that could do that. And when weapons were discovered to be strong enough to clear large groups instantly (Simulor, Tonkor), DE would nerf them. The reason I bring this up is because you had to be more considerate of what damage type you ran and by consequence, what enemy types you target. For example, if you were running Paris Prime against Grineer, Corrosive was not the play! The majority of Grineer units with Ferrite armor were going to be one shot regardless because of it's high-single target damage. So you'd run Radiation to deal increased damage to Alloy armored units, which tended to be your elites (Bombards, Napalms, Nox, etc.) Running an AoE weapon, you'd probably be better off running whatever damage type was most effective against trash mobs, enabling you to handle them better.

That design/idea/concept is why I enjoyed it. You had choices. And more importantly, they mattered. Nowadays, not anymore. The game has been going in the direction of making it SIGNIFICANTLY easier to "big damage to all the things." Everyone and everything is becoming a tileset-nuker. This simplification of the resistances is enforcing that direction and making it even easier to do so. They aren't as many choices now, and they matter even less: Grineer? Corrosive. Corpus? Magnetic. Infested? Heat. Majority of cases, regardless of weapon or Warframe, are covered with just that. I just don't like the direction the games design from a combat perspective has been heading for years /shrug/.

I don't think DE should revert the change because, at least on the forums, a lot of people seem to prefer this change. Whether they continue to like it in the long-term or whether it's healthy for the game in long run, /shrug/. But you got no idea who likes/dislikes a systemic change unless people voice it. That's all this post was :)

[Venus-Venera]

vor 47 Minuten schrieb Vazumongr:

Nowadays Warframe is significantly more solo-oriented, at the very least solo-able.

I don't think DE should revert the change because, at least on the forums, a lot of people seem to prefer this change.

the thing about solobar isn't true at all, because there are certain missions where soloing has extreme disadvantages. Because too many warframes don't have good CC skills. Examples would be: SP mobile defs, SP excav etc.

and the last point is a blatant lie. 7 years ago, Warframe had 26 million accounts according to their employee. How many views does a typical topic have?
Also: have you evaluated the opinions of which topic??? Put the exact facts on the table!
So please don't engage in malicious deception and respect other players....

[(PSN)FrDiabloFr]

9 minutes ago, Venus-Venera said:

the thing about solobar isn't true at all, because there are certain missions where soloing has extreme disadvantages. Because too many warframes don't have good CC skills. Examples would be: SP mobile defs, SP excav etc.

and the last point is a blatant lie. 7 years ago, Warframe had 26 million accounts according to their employee. How many views does a typical topic have?
Also: have you evaluated the opinions of which topic??? Put the exact facts on the table!
So please don't engage in malicious deception and respect other players....

Everything in the game is soloable, i play sp volt, saryn, mirage can annihilate steel path, tridolons, profit taker, exploiter, very much imo easier soloable so please give me evidence of what vazumongur said isn’t true?? Just to add if you play an ok ish build with a good nuke frame steel path defence, extractor missions are a breeze

Edited 16 hours ago by (PSN)FrDiabloFr

[Venus-Venera]

vor 13 Minuten schrieb (PSN)FrDiabloFr:

Everything in the game is soloable, i play sp volt, saryn, mirage can annihilate steel path, tridolons, profit taker, exploiter, very much imo easier soloable so please give me evidence of what vazumongur said isn’t true?? Just to add if you play an ok ish build with a good nuke frame steel path defence, extractor missions are a breeze

proof of what? that you can't understand? because everything is written above. I've also often noticed in the past that you rip out sentences or blocks of words and add something to them. And it happens that I talk about apples and you about pears...
of course I don't mean it in a bad way. but a serious dialogue is not possible.

[(PSN)FrDiabloFr]

36 minutes ago, Venus-Venera said:

the thing about solobar isn't true at all

You said this so provide proof, you’ve stated numerous times you play mostly multiplayer so again what exactly did vazumongur say that wasn’t true?? Just because you can’t solo doesn’t mean the game can’t be soloed lol, You yap alot and say just honestly stupid stuff without saying anything with any purpose.

Edited 16 hours ago by (PSN)FrDiabloFr

[Zext]

I can sympathize to some extent with being sad over the simplistic system we have now, but the previous system was not just convoluted but often contradictory to itself, which is much worse. As long as you can agree the armor scaling changes are better, then I would be on your side that this change was a bit of an over correction (but it did NEED that correction) of the previous system. I think its worst bit is that it doesn't really adapt to how the game itself has changed. 50% more or less damage is pretty small in the end, funny enough, due to the wacky numbers warframe pulls all the time.

An important, indirect result of the contradictory/convoluted previous system is that it ended up making the status effects the defining parts of the different damage types, as whatever bonuses to whatever health types were easily overshadowed by the what utility the status effect brought. Having enemy resistances reflect how effective or ineffective the status effects are would be infinitely more interesting, and more importantly. would more directly impact what someone brings to what faction. Deimos infested are a great example of this in action already, and I don't think we need to go so far as to make it always be immunity or whatever. Having it be that kuva grineer don't flail during heat status and suffer less armor strip would be neat to see. We could have gas mask corpus that can't be toxin'd through, or thermal protections against cold, or even consider things in the other direction and have status effects be extra effective against particular factions or specific enemies.

[3xt1inct]

Unfortunatly I actually do agree with your opinion, and i do hope its for the better of the game, but they are also losing my interest, the complexity and arbitrary armor types kept us from just one shotting everything, when the update launched i noticed that Steel path enemies felt significantly easier than before (can also be the armor change, armor is now capped). Warframe is becoming the neuron activation meme, everyone can do and does big damage, but any CC other than grouping abilities is slowly but surely being phased out. Ironically we had the phased skins in the beginning of the games lifecycle, but now almost everything that required knowledge is being phased out. It has come so far that most players no longer understand how hard Eidolons were to kill on release, or how big of a deal the PoE update actually was.

[Valfaun]

hm... i guess the reception of these changes really depends on what kind of gamer one is. personally, i've come to like the new system because i don't feel as locked into certain damage types anymore and can instead put more attention towards my preferred status procs without much risk that the associated damage type would suck. but i've also never enjoyed painstaking build optimization for specific situations and enemies, so i kinda just found the gear that worked best for me and used the same stuff against everything, no matter how good or bad it was. i'm not a "technical" gamer, i dont pride myself on knowledge and skill. i just wanna have dumb fun with cool Warframes these days, i guess. and that's okay, too. 

but i absolutely understand where OP is coming from. if you enjoy numbercrunching and really thinking about what's best for a given challenge then yeah, i can see how the great simplification of the vulnerabilities and resistances can be off-putting and how those players, especially veterans, can feel "betrayed" in a way. but i also feel like "dumb" players like me might be the majority these days and, well... DE and its investors, shareholders or whoever the hell stands behind them probably seek to grow the game and their bank accounts

[Alpha_Tango]

After reading through the OPs deep connection to the game and his/her frustrations, then compared it to mine, sometimes... Ignorance really is bliss. I have a very superficial idea of my dmg loadouts and just connect the dots to whatever faction I am going to fight. It has always been that way, I barely even crunch numbers or percentages. I can also be lazy enough to care at all and just jump in any mission.

So one can stop playing due to one aspect of the game being changed. What about the evolving new game modes, meticulously made tilesets, open worlds, slowly improving UI, great new warframes, the Helminth system, Incarnons, EDA and our newly controversial story arc that continuously try to pique our interests as players? There are so many other things to appreciate and enjoy in WF, both good and bad (Kahl). Failing missions is real now too so I don't think DE is dumbing down much.

Edited 6 hours ago by Alpha_Tango